Google paid $1 billion for a huge business park near its Mountain View, Calif., HQ— it’s this year’s largest real estate purchase in the Bay Area and the second-largest property purchase in the United States this year, eclipsed only by another Google acquisition, the $2.4 billion the company paid in March for Chelsea Market in Manhattan. Google has been leasing office space at the former site of LinkedIn’s headquarters; the 51.8-acre Shoreline Technology Park is larger than the property that accommodates the company’s Googleplex headquarters a few blocks to the west and also exceeds the size of the parcel across the street where Google is building an iconic “dome” campus that features canopies and tents. [George Avalos / The Mercury News]